Guest Blogger - Lynne McTaggart

Today we welcome author Lynn McTaggart for a guest post. She is promoting her new book About The Bond: Connecting Through the Space Between Us


Publisher: Free Press

In this resonant, persuasive book, author Lynne McTaggart (The Intention Experiment; The Field) draws on recent groundbreaking science to show that the connectedness that all spiritual people feel is real, not illusory. We do truly exist, she argues, in a vast, dynamic web of connection in which all living things are constantly involved in information transfers with our environment. To demonstrate these interactions, she describes recent research in quantum physics, cellular biology, and psychology. A seminal New Age statement for the new millennium.


She writes:

Against Darwin, against debate

Since the 2009 bicentenary celebrations of Darwin's birth and television shows portraying Darwin as a cross between Santa Clause and God, it has been virtually impossible to take issue with anything Darwin stood for without being labelled a creationist.

Ideas hijacked
No doubt, Darwin's theory of natural selection was a bold and remarkable advance in our understanding of life.

Nevertheless, thanks to newly invented telegraphic cables and advances in printmaking, Darwin's views quickly swept across the globe and were largely hijacked as intellectual justification for a raft of fledgling social movements.

Darwinian evolution made for a perfect fit with emergent western capitalism. English biologist Thomas Huxley, dubbed "Darwin's bulldog", was convinced that it was in the natural order for human beings to put their own interests above all others. In fact Huxley had a simple recipe for those without sufficient means to support themselves: "They die, and it is best they should die."

Darwin's theories were also cited as proof positive that the world's races were inherently unequal, and that certain races "particularly the white Europeans" were far "fitter" than others. They were used, for instance, to justify the Chinese revolution and the "whitening" of Latin American indigenous culture with European stock.

Columbine natural selection
Darwin obviously is not to blame for the vast amount of misguided notions that have been carried out in his name.

Nevertheless, scientists do not formulate their ideas in a vacuum, but usually reflect the cultural mores of their time. The young Darwin was profoundly influenced by the concerns put forward by the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus about population explosion and limited natural resource, and ultimately concluded that since there wasn’t enough to go around, life must evolve through struggle.

Some of the fledgling ideas of what came to be called Social Darwinism may have originally influenced his theories. Darwin himself predicted (and appeared to favor) the notion that at some point in the future Europeans and Americans would exterminate those deemed to be "savages", and the "higher civilized" races would prevail. "Excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed," he once noted in a letter to a friend.

Closed to interpretation
My biggest problem is reserved for the greatest Darwinian hijacking of them all. Modern-day interpreters of Darwin, the so-called "neo-Darwinists", regard genes as having the power to control every aspect of our lives, so that the rest of the body is considered simply the vehicle of transport.

I, for one, do not buy either the "selfish" or the "struggle-for-dominance" metaphor. The more new evidence I examine in virtually every scientific discipline, the more I grow convinced that life exists through a giant act of cooperation and that the leitmotif for all of nature is connection, rather than battle.

Scientific fascism
A few years ago the BBC aired an excellent documentary called Did Darwin Kill God? The theologian who narrated the show made the very good case that neo-Darwinists and the Creationists are both extremists, misappropriating the views of Darwin.

To my mind, Darwin did not kill God. Darwin is God now.

So long as we believe there is nothing more to add to the story, we blind ourselves to the real truth of science, which is that no single scientist, however brilliant, can declare that this is it, the full and complete guide to the universe.

Our scientific story must always remain unfinished, continuously revised by every new Darwin.

Lynne McTaggart

Thanks you for Joining us Lynn!

About the author:

Lynne McTaggart is an investigative journalist and author, and a sought-after public speaker whose talks and workshops have transformed the lives of the thousands around the world who have heard her. She is also an accomplished broadcaster, who has appeared on many national tv and radio shows, including Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra shows.

The hallmark of her work is exhaustive research that produces science-based discoveries in the worlds of science, spirituality and health. She edits the monthly health journal What Doctors Don't Tell You. And was also the editor of the 48-lesson partwork, Living The Field, perhaps the most definitive work yet to bridge the worlds of physics and spirituality in its 768 pages.

She was born in the USA and now lives in London, UK, with her publisher husband, Bryan, and their two children, and pet dog Ollie.

Her website: http://www.lynnemctaggart.com/